There's a TastyQ&A with Scientific American's Gareth Cook up on the SciAm website. It covers a range of issues, from the evolutionary origins of taste and smell to the future of flavor. And one of my favorite subjects, kids' weird tastes, which remain semi-inexplicable to scientists and despite the spectacular insights of the past generation:

Kids are, biologically speaking, weird creatures. Pickiness seems to be programmed by evolution: it would have protected small children from eating strange, possibly poisonous items. Certain preferences, meanwhile, can develop arbitrarily and become very strong, then suddenly fade – every kid goes through phases as the brain matures and the neural networks that shape perception and behavior grow. Each person’s sense of flavor is like a snowflake or a fingerprint, in this way, shaped by partly by genes, but largely by experience. And always changing as more meals are eaten.

If you have kids – or were, or are one, for that matter – you know what I'm talking about.

This morning I was on NPR's Weekend Edition with Rachel Martin, who covered quite a lot of ground in a short time. One of the most fascinating things about researching Tasty was exploring the evolution of the senses of taste and smell (the two biggest components of flavor), which originated way, way back at the dawn of life itself. Then at crucial evolutionary turning points, they grew sharper, and brains grew bigger with them.

"And so this is kind of a basic motivational hinge that drove evolution," he says, "because in order to out-compete your fellow primitive creatures, you needed sharper senses." And, "if you had sharper senses, you also needed a bigger brain in order to process those senses."

When it comes to humans, scientists have argued that those bigger brains emerged as we started eating meat – which is packed with calories and fat, compared with the fruit, leaves, tubers and other raw foods our earliest ancestors ate.Check out the interview here.